Carlo Giovannella

ASLERD and University of Rome Tor Vergata

In this position paper, starting from the concept of competence and highlighting how competence frameworks always underlie a model of the indi-vidual's operativeness in a specific context, an educational model is proposed in which scientific thinking and design thinking-both of which can be enhanced by computational thinking-are integrated. This mo...

This article presents a detailed analysis of the influence of age, gender, school level, and geographical localization on the perception of the respondents (231 teachers and 153 principals) about the effects generated, after two years, by the digital shock undergone by the Italian school ecosystem at the beginning of March 2020, due to the pandemic...

In questo articolo vengono illustrati i risultati di un'indagine condotta, con la partecipazione di un campione significativo di docenti e dirigenti scolastici, sugli effetti indotti dallo shock digitale che ha investito la scuola italiana in occasione del lockdown indotto dal Covid-19. L'indagine fa seguito alle precedenti due - condotte rispettiv...

One year after the outbreak of the pandemic that provoked a forced and massive adoption of technology enhanced learning practices, followed by a continuous evolution of their delivery modalities (on-line learning, blended learning, parallel blended learning, hybrid learning) and, finally, by a strong commitment to come back to a “new normal”, we ha...

This paper presents an exploratory study on the reaction of the Iraqi university ecosystem to the Covid-19 pandemics, a learning ecosystem with no consolidated tradition in distance learning operating in a country where connectivity is granted mainly by a mobile phone infrastructure. The study analyses data collected from questionnaires filled in b...

Two years after the shock undergone by the Italian school ecosystem-due to the lock-down imposed by the Covid-19 at beginning of March 2020-the effects generated by the resulting fully digital immersion have been investigated by a survey administered to a representative sample of school teachers and principals. The analysis of the outcomes, togethe...

This article describes and discusses the conditions under which starting from the Italian school system it would be possible to develop smart learning ecosystems. In particular, we focus on the so-called community pact-an opportunity recently introduced and promoted by the Ministry of Education-and on how dedicated technologies may support it. Star...

This article deals with the design for well-being in large techno ecosystems, like smart cities and smart learning ecosystems, taken here as examples. Starting from a people/human-centered vision of such ecosystems and the identification of their smartness with the ASLERD pyramids of needs, the relationships of this latter with the well-being and t...

After a forced mass adopton of technology enhanced learning practices, we have assisted to a continuous evolution of their delivery modalities (on-line learning, blended learning, parallel blended learning) and, finally, to a strong commitment by rulers to come back into the classroom. One year after the outbreak of the pandemic, thus, we have inve...

This chapter illustrates the relevance that smart learning ecosystems can assume in the education of smart citizens, considered as indispensable agents of the development of the smartness of the cities. Starting from the description of an alternative model of smart city—i.e., a people-centered one in which the smartness of the city and the citizens...

La pandemia por el COVID-19 tomó al mundo por sorpresa. EnMéxico, al igual que en muchas partes del mundo,millones de estudiantes cambiaron alaprendizajeen línea de un día para otro. En este documento se presentan los resultados de una encuesta aplicadaa estudiantesuniversitarios con la finalidad de entender tanto su adaptación como el involucramie...

The identification of a set of competences and skills useful to sustain the development of smart cities and, before all, to operate and live as smart citizens must necessarily start from the definition of a model of smart city that, in our opinion, has to be people centered. Once that the operational context has been defined, it is also necessary t...

During the last year students have been exposed to a continuous evolution of the learning processes (fully on-line, blended, parallel-blended, rotation of the face-to-face activities, etc.) and often to many different technologies, with only one common denominator: the use of on-line activities. Despite the peculiarity of the pandemic situation, on...

The pandemic outbreak has almost cancelled for a long period the possibil-ity to use laboratories to carry on didactic activities, including those fore-seen for the alternation schemes. In this paper we report on an experience carried on in a vocational school of informatics. The alternation scheme conducted in "smart working" has been based on a d...

La pandemia por el COVID-19 tomó al mundo por sorpresa en muchos aspectos. Uno de los campos más afectados es la educación, en México millones de estudiantes cambiaron alaprendizaje en línea de un día para otro. En este documento se presentan los resultados de un cuestionario aplicado a profesores universitarioscon la finalidad de entender su perce...

This paper reports the outcomes of a unique investigation coordinated by ASLERD that had the aim of comparing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on three learning ecosystems with different cultural backgrounds and settings: Iraq, Italy and Mexico. Using the same questionnaire translated from Italian to English, Arabic and Spanish, the study has i...

This paper presents an empirical study to investigate students’ perspectives and attitude towards distance-learning at the university level in Iraq. Universities were forced to convert from face-to-face (f2f) learning to fully virtual due to the coronavirus covid-19 pandemic. The transition was within two weeks, which probably causes some challenge...

We consider the issue N. 46 particularly significant because it comes at the end of 2020, a year that marked the recent history of humanity. On one side, the pandemic reminded us how fragile mankind is and that it can succumb to a small and invisible enemy; on the other side, the Covid-19 challenged and stimulated the potential of our intelligence...

In this paper, we report one of the first investigations conducted at the National level with university teachers, with the aim to capture their perceptions about the capability of the learning ecosystems to react to the lockdown imposed by the pandemic and the recourse to on-line learning. The study, conducted about two months after the beginning...

This paper reports the outcome of a transnational investigation coordinated by ASLERD to compare the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the learning ecosystems of Iraq, Italy and Mexico. Using a questionnaire translated from Italian into English, Arabic and Spanish, the study has investigated these ecosystems through the lens of University teacher...

In this paper, we report one of the first investigations conducted at the National level with university teachers, with the aim to capture their perceptions about the capability of the learning ecosystems to react to the lockdown imposed by the pandemic and the recourse to on-line learning. The study, conducted about two months after the beginning...

This study is one of the first investigations conducted within the Italian school system to capture teachers' perspective, experiences and perceptions about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on school education. It was performed two months after the beginning of lockdown, when online teaching and learning processes were fully in place and had rea...

In questo articolo riportiamo gli esiti di un'indagine svolta tra i docenti della scuola italiana durante il periodo del COVID-19 in un momento in cui la didattica on-line era stata ormai avviata in tutte le scuole e i processi si potevano considerare allo stato stazionario, prima delle nuove fibrillazioni causate dall'avvicinarsi degli scrutini e...

In this contribution, we report on the outcomes of a project that aimed at comparing high quality alternation schemes that have been designed to reduce the mismatch between the skills demanded by the job market and those that can be developed nowadays attending either high or vocational schools. Despite the differences among schemes and experiences...

This paper represents the first investigation conducted in Italy at university level to detect the effects induced on students by the swap of the educational processes from physical to fully virtual, caused by the Coronavirus epidemic. The study involved 101 students attending a bachelor course in Educational Science. The results show that, althoug...

In questo articolo riportiamo gli esiti di un'indagine svolta tra i docenti della scuola italiana durante il periodo del COVID-19 in un momento in cui la didattica on-line era stata ormai avviata in tutte le scuole e i processi si potevano considerare allo stato stazionario, prima delle nuove fibrillazioni causate dall'avvicinarsi degli scrutini e...

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study conducted on the Italian school system to capture the teachers’ perspective, experiences and perceptions about education two months after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, when the on-line educational processes were fully in place and reached their steady state. The paper reports...

In a people-centered perspective, to get smart, a learning ecosystem has to undergo a long evolutionary process involving a combination of co-design, participatory evaluation, and empowering steps, among other things. In this light, design literacy becomes the cornerstone for enabling and supporting this evolutionary path. Digital technologies are...

This paper represents the first investigation conducted in Italy at university level to detect the effects induced on students by the swop of the educa-tional processes from physical to fully virtual, caused by the Coronavirus epidemic. The study involved 101 students attending a bachelor course in Educational science. The results show that, althou...

Abstract. This paper represents the first investigation conducted in Italy at university level to detect the effects induced on students by the swop of the educational processes from physical to fully virtual, caused by the Corona-virus epidemic. The study involved 101 students attending a bachelor course in Educational science. The results show th...

Abstract. In this contribution we report on the outcomes of a project that aimed at comparing high quality alternation schemes, designed to reduce the mismatch between the skills required by the job market and those that can be developed attending high and vocational schools. Despite the differ-ences among the schemes and experiences that have been...

In this paper we present the outcomes of a participatory evaluation of the smartness of a sample of Rome's schools conducted over two years. The analysis of the results allowed: a) to follow the evolution of the schools on the smartness plane, i.e. the plane identified by the two principal components extracted from a PCA analysis applied to the ind...

Technology mediation has always been a basic need for the survival and development of the human species. The exceptional situation related with technology nowadays is related with the massive human interaction it promotes in diverse communication situations and contexts. The smart-ness concept has been introduced to advocate the augmented communica...

Since three years the Italian Ministry of Education (MIUR) has introduced a massive alternance scheme, completely new to Europe, whose implementation still shows several critical issues and requires a special effort by all potential players - schools, associations, enterprises, local communities, etc. - to design and experiment models and strategie...

This article describes the recent introduction of a massive alternance scheme in the Italian schools by means of the so called “Buona scuola” (good school) law. In this article, the authors report on a) the outcomes of a survey carried out on a large sample of high school students attending schools located in the South-East area of Rome; b) a compa...

In the recent past it has been shown that participatory evaluation constitutes an al-ternative approach to traditional benchmarking of learning ecosystems capable to provide an insight on the smartness of universities and schools. Such alternative approach has also been shown capable to make emerge problems and desiderata from the opinions of all p...

This work presents the adaptation of the participatory approach used in the past to evaluate campuses' smartness to the case of K12 and High schools. The adaptation has been implemented taking into consideration both the universalities represented by the principles that have inspired the approach (i.e. satisfaction of needs described by the Maslow'...

Introdução / Introduction Na atual conjuntura dos territórios em promover os serviços oferecidos no mesmo, tem sido implantado para sua melhor otimização e desenvolvimento a mediação tecnológica como parte da estratégia que facilita a aprendizagem quanto à eficácia e eficiência do usufruto pelos utilizadores destes serviços. O conceito de affordanc...

In this paper we report and discuss the results of a survey conducted in the second semester of the year 2015-2016 that involved 4,558 students of a network of schools located in the southeast quadrant of Rome. The outcomes of the survey highlighted on the one hand a set of criticalities that have been met in the application of the provisions conta...

The increasing smartness of cities and territories is driving the change of all aspects of learning: places, processes, approaches and methods, contents, roles and skills. The grand challenge (GC) is to develop an adequate governance of such transformation and through learning disseminate a “person in place centered” perspective to inspire the desi...

A new method to perform a bottom-up extraction and benchmark of the perceived multilevel smartness of complex ecosystems has been recently described and applied to territories and learning ecosystems like university campuses and schools. In this paper we study the resilience of our method by comparing and integrating the data collected in several E...

In this paper we describe: a) the participatory evaluation and grading (PG/E) method-principles and algorithm-that has been implemented within the on-line learning environment LIFE in two, untrusted (UPG/E) and trusted (TPG/E), versions; b) the outcomes of its use as part of the activities carried on to retrain K12 and high school teachers. The ana...

This study introduces the reader to a “people centered” and multidimensional definition of the “smartness” of an ecosystem and to its bottom-up detection, that here has been specialized to the case of a learning ecosystem: a university campus. The methodology developed and validated by a European consortium composed by members of the ASLERD – Assoc...

In this paper we report on a first investigation aimed at identifying possible differences in the perception of the campus' smartness among the players-bachelor students, master students and professors-that animate learning processes and campus' life at University of Aveiro. The detected differences, as discussed in the body of the paper, can be as...

Each year a considerable amount of money is spent in the production of several national and international University rankings that may deeply influence the students’ enrollment. However, all such rankings are based almost exclusively on numerical indicators weakly related to the quality of the learning process and do not consider the perceptions of...

Urban environments are composed by cities and citizens but presently benchmarking approaches - even the standardized ones - consider only the first of these two components and identify the smartness of a city with the efficacy and the effectiveness of infrastructures and processes to optimize consumptions and productive chains. Beyond the statistic...

div class="page" title="Page 1"> This contribution aims at fostering a collaborative effort by relevant stakeholders - policy makers, entrepreneurs, researchers, teachers, students, etc. – to critically explore the role of ICT in supporting a participatory development of people-centered "smart" learning ecosystems, able to produce social capital a...

Today's "Smart Cities" (SCs) models promise to preserve and improve the soci-ety’s well-being (Lee, Han, Leem, & Yigitcanlar, 2008; Giffinger & Gudrun, 2010). Most models adopt top-down functionalist approaches, aimed at optimizing the con-sumption of primary resources (energy, water, materials, food, and time through the optimization of people-, g...

This contribution is intended to describe the rationale of a project, in progress, that aims at recovering the centrality of the school through a systemic approach adopting the Design Based Learning as an operative framework of reference capable to foster: a the acquisition of an adequate level of LIFE skills by all actors of the learning process s...

This contribution is intended to describe the rationale of a project, in progress, that aims at recovering the centrality of the school through a systemic approach based on the Design as operative framework of reference capable to foster the acquisition of an adequate level of LIFE skills, an increase of the social capital and an appropriate level...

Each year a considerable amount of money is spent on the production of several national and international University rankings that may deeply influence the students’ enrollment. However, all such rankings are based almost exclusively on numerical indicators weakly related to the quality of the learning process and do not consider the perceptions of...

This special issue of the journal collects the proposals of the call for papers focusing on "Digital Literacy and Digital Competence: Facts, Problems, Needs & Trends", an issue solicited by many sides and especially by the members of the editorial board, to draw the panorama emerging from most recent studies on these topics and to define new strate...

Each year a considerable amount of money is spent in the production of several national and international University rankings that may deeply influence the students' enrollment. However, all such rankings are based almost exclusively on numerical indicators weakly related to the quality of the learning process and do not consider the perceptions of...

In the future smarter territories are expected to induce transformations of many aspects of the learning processes, but how their smartness is and will be related to that of the learning ecosystems ? In this paper, by means of Principal Component Analysis, we critically analyse methods presently used to benchmark and produce University rankings, by...

In this paper we provide a framework useful to define and measure the perceived "smartness" of learning eco-systems of any kind and, more in general, of cities and territories. The proposed framework, inspired by Maslow's pyramid of needs [18] and by the “flow” concept [6] helps to integrate bottom-up approaches and top-down ones and to develop a m...

In this paper we describe a process of participatory grading that have been modified by the introduction of a "trust" parameter to account for the confidence that students have in their peers and, as well, for their diligence and ability in evaluating and self-evaluating. Lights, shadows and lesson learned from the outcomes are presented and discus...

In accordance with a 'people centred' vision, this paper critically examines current approaches to smart cities benchmarking. In particular, by means of correlation analysis and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) we put in evidence present limitations of city rankings and, as well, the emergence of different perspectives for data interpretations. T...

Smart Territory Analytics is a very young domain that by a great number of people is expected to support benchmarking of cities’ and territories’ smartness. Analytics, however, is first of all, a route toward awareness but the question is: about what? In other words what does smartness mean? Here, as an example of “wisdom of the crowd” extraction,...

This article proposes to identify the smartness of a learning eco-system - physical and/or virtual - with its attractiveness that, in a people in place centered perspective, can be put in relation with the ability of the eco-system to meet needs and expectations of all categories of actors taking part in a given learning process and, finally, with...

The increasing smarteness of personal devices and territories are rapidly changing the scenarios of data production. Data access and/or data possession can determine positions of privilege, but the real competitive advantage will derive more and more from the ability to identify relevant dimensions and flows and, of course, from that to extract mea...

This article presents the results of a design workshop that developed scenarios of learning in an imaginary "smart city": Villard-de-Lans (Vercors, French Alps) by exploring suitable methodological approaches to the Smart City Learning Design. The aim of this case study was to propose "glocal" solutions intended to balance the global trends and the...

We present a study on the use of the Microsoft Kinect (Kinect) to implement interactive urban environments that integrate smart tourism and smart learning. The tests were carried out on a prototype containing a set of apps whose navigation was inspired by smart phones and tablets navigation. The results show that the quality of the interaction and...

Analyzing student performance indicators has been a long-standing research direction, nowadays demanding for new multidimensional approaches tailored to the recent advent of Web 2.0 in education. This paper investigates two such potential learning performance indicators: i) students' active involvement with the Web 2.0 tools and ii) students' learn...

This work is intended to foster a “quantum leap” in the reflection on learning in smart cities/territories. We try to move from a vision according to which education is identified with “infrastructures and services” needed to sustain the smart city “organism” (due also to the social capital that it may produce) toward a “new” vision that recovers t...

The 21st century has seen an expansion in digital technology and the ways in which it affects everyday life. These technologies have become essential in the growth of social communication and mass media. Fostering 21st Century Digital Literacy and Technical Competency offers the latest in research on the technological advances on computer proficien...

Gli ecosistemi in cui intelligenza, sensibilità e responsività accompagnano la persona pongono sfide per il futuro dell’apprendimento e spingono a riflettere sulla ridefinizione di spazi, contenuti, processi, competenze e approcci valutativi. Techno-ecosystems embodying people’s intelligence, sensitivity and responsiveness are challenging the futur...

By going to the root of complexity I show that it can be simplified only if apparent. The true complexity - arising from the peculiarities of the laws governing the interaction among n components of a 'natural' system and, as well, from the 'topology' of the latter - requires to deeply re-think the approach to the design: operative framework, expec...

This article presents the first attempt to investigate the existence of possible quantitative correlations among the physical characteristics of emotional portrayals and the emotions perceived by humans during their listening. Our aim was: a) to design and develop a new investigation protocol; b) to obtain information useful to recognition and synt...

The cities, despite the huge size reached by some and the problems by which they are sometimes afflicted, continue to attract people and pose epochal sustainability challenges to which policy makers and planners have decided to respond with a top-down functionalist approach aiming at transforming the cities in "smart cities". The purpose of this pa...

Nowadays collaborative educational processes require the use of increasingly sophisticated analytical tools to help teachers, tutors and students to identify, at best, emergent behaviors. In this paper we describe the use of a module that has been designed and developed to perform Principal Component Analysis as internal facility of the on-line lea...

The tutorial aims at getting auditors acquainted with an application, and an equivalent open web-service, that allow straightforwardly to create, administer and analyze tests designed to measure the emotions conveyed by multi-channel and single channel media signals/stimuli (text, pictures, voice, music and sounds, video, etc.).

This article describes a study, lasted three academic years, aiming to detect modifications of learning styles (LS) over the time. LS measurements have been performed according to the Felder-Silverman's learning styles model (FSLSM) and measuring tool (ILS questionnaire). Experimental results show that individual LS measured after one or two year/s...

Event-related potential (ERP) studies are very specialized ones that can be used only to investigate specific problems to get a different perspective with respect to more traditional measurements techniques. The peculiarity of ERP measures (time windows, repetitions, etc.) requires a careful design of the experimental protocol to obtain meaningful...

In this article we present a scenario describing a possible transformation of the places in charge to preserve our Cultural Heritage and to support our learning from the past: the museums. In a not-so-far future, we may assist to the opening of the museum-boxes, that blossomed and transformed in "museal fields", will spread into the territory in or...

In this paper we describe a new interactive musical instrument, TaTi-Conga, aimed at introducing children to music, according to an active pedagogical approach: an electronic lighting percussion allowing to get in contact with and explore, by playing, all basic elements of music - rhythm, melody, harmony.

As part of a project aiming to demonstrate feasibility and meaningfulness of on-line and blended P³BL (Problem, Process & Project Based) design educational processes (Interaction Design, Design or the Experience, etc.), in this paper we present and discuss a participatory-grading procedure that has been designed to assess the intermediate tests of...

Being a digital citizen has transformed from a process of familiarizing ones’ self with terminology and techniques to a full-time responsibility in the hands of any who want to stay abreast of the latest technological change in their respective field. Current Trends and Future Practices for Digital Literacy and Competence offers a look at the lates...

We present a detailed low field susceptibility study of a sintered La1.85Sr0.15CuO4 superconductor. We find that two critical temperatures should be considered in order to explain our observations. The lower one is characteristic of an order-disorder transition in the Josephson Junction lattice and scales as H.55. Moreover, it is inferred that fiel...

We have carried out torque measurements on sintered samples of oxide superconductors. The results show different regimes: we observe a fairly abrupt crossover from weak torque to strong torque, starting at a field of the order of 150 gauss in La1.85Sr0.15CuO4. The torque signals are rigid-or viscous-like depending on the field and on the history, a...

The advent of new media and web technologies made both contents and “containers” more “liquid” and requires an in depth reflection on the multi-facets concept of literacy in which the author tries to develop from an education point of view that can be defined as “experiential”. According to such reflection, in the present scenarios, the “design” be...